Pennsylvania Concern Trolls Feeling The Heat

by: Chris Bowers

Thu Oct 23, 2008 at 13:46

More in the extended entry.

The Politico, which I sometimes think should be renamed "The Concern Troll," has a rather remarkable article called "McCain's Path To Victory Through PA."The article takes concern trolling to new levels, as it rounds up every specious argument and concern troll one could find in the state. Remember, Kerry won Pennsylvania by just 144,000 votes, even though he lost the national election by 2.46%. Surely, with the national polls having swung only 10% since 2004, and with Pennsylvania not registering any new Democrats at all, this is an extremely tenuous margin that should scare us all.

An "internal poll" of Pennsylvania supposedly showing Obama only up 2 in the state is getting a lot of play. An email about the poll was forwarded by a random campaign worker to some radio hosts in the state, which is truly a fine example of concern trolling about Pennsylvania. Odd, however, that the poll itself has never been produced, and that it now turns out to be more than a week old. Also, the campaign worker who sent the email was reprimanded.

Jack Murtha, who retracted called people in Western PA "racist" by instead calling them "rednecks," is concern trolling it up. I think this was meant to imply that Pennsylvania voters are wavering on Obama due to racism, and thus keep the campaign from becoming complacent in Pennsylvania. However, in a delicious bit of comuppence, this concern trolling only seems to be hurting Jack Murtha himself, as he only leads by 5% in his re-election campaign. It is nice to see the concern trolls feeling the heat, rather than the target of their concern trolling.

Leaving this concern troll orgy aside to return to the real world for a moment, four polls released this morning all show Obama ahead by double-digits in Pennsylvania. Pollster.com has them all, showing Obama up 10, 10, 13 and 10. Another poll released earlier this week showed Obama up 8%, bringing the five-poll, one-week average to Obama +10.2%. All of these polls are of likely voters, and collectively show Obama at 51.2%, over the important 50% threshold.

It is pretty sweet that this Dionysian episode of concern trolling didn't even slightly damage Obama in Pennsylvania, but did do real damage to at least two of the concern trolls--Jack Murtha and the campaign worker who forwarded the old email. I would like to see more of this in the future, as people who express concerns about Democrats and Democratic campaigns not from a sincere desire to help the party, but instead to forward their own personal agenda, need to be taken down several notches. The results of this campaign are going to put a massive dent in the vast Democratic concern troll industry, and we can already see that happening even before November 4th.